


2 for 1 Serenade

by jeweniper



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Karaoke, M/M, Mutual Pining, Space Mall, canonverse, i do love me some pining, nobody does, pidge doesn't get paid enough to deal with them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 09:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9485975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeweniper/pseuds/jeweniper
Summary: Keith finds Lance annoying. Keith finds his crush on Lance to be highly annoying.Keith finds singing with Lance at some mind-boggling space karaoke joint when he should be shopping for supplies to be...the complete opposite of highly annoying???





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Nightmares](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7813126) by [Trashness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trashness/pseuds/Trashness). 



> I did not expect to write anything for this fandom, but then a scene in an unrelated fic gave me that harebrained "what if" idea and here we are. I also heard once that singing with someone makes you closer to them? Though I don't know how true that is. Plus, who doesn't like karaoke amirite? If you enjoy it I'll be happy. (also like what is a title what is a summary what is writing)

“I thought you said this one was lesser-known!?” Hunk gasps when the pinkish haze explodes into a sea passerby—of various forms, various species, and _all_ milling about the wide avenues of the Aulkatrine Space Mall.

“Well…” Coran grabs a flyer as it falls from a flock of some winged creatures overhead. “Quiznak! It seems they’re having the biggest Bironiian Flaugruhm this side of the galaxy!”

Pidge inches closer to Keith to avoid being swept with the crowd before turning to the conversation. “A what?”

“You know, a Bironiian Flaugruhm!”

“Yeah, I heard you, but what on EARTH—“

“Keep your glasses on Pidge, I got this,” Lance drawls, patting her head and squinting at the flyer still clasped in Coran’s fingers.

Keith huffs a sigh, already too tired of Lance’s bravado and overloaded by the crowd to keep quiet. He just hopes the dramatics will keep to a minimum. Immediately following his exhale, he watches in mild horror as Lance absolutely _preens_. His eyes light up like a hideous sunlit pool and crinkle at the corners in just that way Keith hates, and his teeth part in an open grin as though pearls of that irritating laughter he can never get out of his head are primed to jostle free.

“Don’t worry Captain Killjoy, I’ve spent enough years bullshitting reading materials to get a nice gist of the…” his next words are dull with anticlimax, “it’s a going-out-of-business sale.”

“Really, Lance. So, you’re telling me you READ that flyer in some ALIEN language and just, FIGURED IT OUT?” Keith wheezes when a large fuzzy trunk nudges him neatly out of the way.

“I know, I know. It’s hard to believe context guessing skills like mine come package-deal with this smokin’ bod, but sometimes we have to accept the truth, Keith.”

He wiggles his eyebrows, goading. Keith nearly rises to the bait when Coran’s hand suddenly claps down on his shoulder. “Yes exactly, like I said. Anyway, that doesn’t change our purpose! We’re still meant to gather as many foodstuffs and nonessentials as we can carry back to Shiro and Allura in the castle between the five of us. So, let’s focus on the task, hm?” He looks pointedly between the arguing paladins.

 “Yeah Lance, more ‘we’ and less ‘he’” Pidge yelps when Lance ruffles up her hair. Keith doesn’t exactly get it, but he doesn’t care.  He moves to follow the group, letting Coran’s warnings to stick together fall into the bustling background noise.

And in every sense of the word does he mean _noise_. When he’s able to catch a glimpse above some group of mall shoppers that isn’t several meters taller than he is, Keith sees banners in bright colors undoubtedly advertising sales, interspersed by airborne flocks that either carry shopping bags of their own or drop confetti and coupons from their grasps. Beneath the tide-like waves of multilingual conversation and dinky mall tunes, he’s bombarded by the sharp smells of what must be food and other scents he couldn’t place if you paid him. Mesmerized and overwhelmed, he keeps Lance at the edge of his vision to stay on track. This only dawns on him as a terrible plan when he realizes that the redhead he’d been so loyally tailing was not in fact Coran but some humanoid alien girl. Of course.

“Lance!”

Lance jumps, turning to give Keith a shy grin while his hand self-consciously rubs the back of his ear. “Oh, howdy, Keith. Any idea where the rest are?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. “Hey Pidge,” he calls into the transmitter blandly, not surprised in the least that looking at Lance had been a bad idea.

It was always a bad idea.

“Keith! Where’d you guys go?” Pidge’s voice responds, scratchy and metallic, from the small speaker.

“Eh, I don’t know. I ended up following this bonehead,” he ignores Lance’s indignant squawk, “and now we’re lost.”

“I’m not even surprised. Okay, well this store is pretty small so—yeah Hunk, they’re fine—so just hang tight somewhere and we’ll find you later? It’s getting late so be somewhere easy to find.” They say their goodbyes and Keith opens his eyes to see Lance gaping at the activity around them, smile tickling his face like it often is—more the forgotten side-effect of constant enjoyment than a dedicated expression.  Lamps in the vicinity dance in his eyes.

Keith looks away. “All right asshole, your blind wandering got us into this mess, so it can get us out. Find someplace like you.”

“What do you mean?”

His lips quirk up without permission. “You know—loud, flashy, something hard to ignore no matter how hard you try.” He furrows his eyebrows at the last one. Wait.

Lance has already moved on, remorseless over getting them lost. “Don’t worry my emo friend, your amazing counterpart will find us a wonderful place to spend our time in a jiffy.” He weaves through the crowds effortlessly, somehow hitting no one with the obnoxiously large gait of his steps.

They walk in relative silence, moseying through the herd at a leisurely pace. After nearly stepping on a family of duck-sized Mongrets and rushing to weave around a lamp without getting too far from Lance, _again_ , Keith breaks the silence. “How do you do that?” Only a small bit of exasperation leaks into his voice.

“Hm? Do what?”

“Do,” he waves his arms uselessly, lamenting the calm surroundings. They’d serve him better in combat. “Get through everybody like it’s no big deal?” Even now he is anxiously aware of their precarious pause in the river of movement around them.

“What do you…” A grin coils up his face lightning-quick and something in Keith definitely doesn’t flutter. “What’s the matter, spent too long as a lone wolf and now you can’t weave through a crowd?” He notices a stiff discomfort that Keith thought he’d been hiding rather well, and his tone softens. “I’m just used to it. Almost every week was like an extended family reunion at my house, back on Earth.” He smiles distantly into the multitude for a moment. “Anyway, not a big deal.” His eyes suddenly swell twofold and that stupid, dopey grin sneaks back over his face. “We should go there.”

Keith scowls in confusion and begins to turn before Lance scoops an arm over his shoulder. “No peeking! Because you’re just going to say no.” He ignores the protests and drags him along inside.

“Inside” turns out to be a long corridor with beads dangling from the ceiling and many deep maroon doors, each containing an indistinct but vaguely threatening series of thumps, whines, and occasionally wails of emotion that Keith is convinced must be terror. “Lance, where the _hell_ are we?” He tries once more to slip out of his grasp but the hallway is too narrow for him to maneuver properly.

“No no, if we’re going to do this we’re doing it right. Aha! Welcome to break time paradise my pouty friend.”

Finally released, Keith’s protest to the term “pouty” slips discarded from his lips so that he can fully take in the bowl-shaped room around him. It is nearly as wide as the common space on the ship, filled with a few tables and a plush couch at the back, faced by a dawn orange stage that slopes out of the floor and is backed by a wall with a large imbedded screen that streams what looks like windings and static. Currently an ice blue, oozing lizard hisses very passionately into the bulbous stalk in their hands, and a mixed audience of aliens sway and cheer from various seats in the room. At least one holds something vaguely like a tambourine.

“Oh _no._ ”

“Oh _yes_ , Keith.”

“I’m NOT doing alien karaoke! We don’t have time for this, we should be with the rest of the group! Getting supplies!”

“Don’t be such a downer man, Pidge even told us to sit tight. And it’s exactly what you wanted: loud, flashy, mesmerizing,” Keith snorts at the change in descriptor, “anyway just tell her where to find us and have a seat. You’re going to live a little whether you like it or not!” Without another word, he claps and whistles for the lizard on stage and jogs over to the couch, where he flicks open the glowing book on the table and begins scanning the pages.

Spending an evening doing alien karaoke with Lance was on the list of things Keith would rather never do, somewhere below _get kidnapped by the Galra_ and _eat watermelon for the rest of his life_. But it’s true that they’ve got time to kill, so with a moment of hesitation he sends Pidge the coordinates and slinks over to the couch to sink down next to Lance, idly looking at the pages over his shoulder. As long as nobody makes him sing.

“Dude,” Lance hums quietly, still flipping through the pages, “I’m totally going to make you sing.”

He snorts. _Typical_. “Good luck with that hotshot. How are you going to sing anything? You can’t even read this, ANY of this,” he aligns the emphasis with a pointed wave at the large book, which seems to include a very impressive collection of alien languages that all must have passed through this way-planet at some point. He has no intention of singing, but he kind of hopes Lance will find something in the book anyway, at least to save them from a night of clapping blindly at all the other performers.

“Haven’t you ever been to one of these places? They have an uncanny ability to include some of the things you would never ex—Oh my god.” Keith keeps silent in defeat, reading—though he can hardly believe it—a third of a page collection of songs in good old Earthly script. Most of the songs are in English, but there’s a few in Spanish and Chinese, one in Russian, and a couple of others in languages Keith doesn’t recognize.

Lance has entered a song and hopped up on stage before he can say Quiznak, and as the burgundy lighting splits for a spotlight over his teammate, Keith hears the unmistakable intro to Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” and groans. He’s seen Lance dance in the kitchen and knows the song was _made_ for him. He also learns, startlingly quickly, that Lance intends to perform the entire song to him and that he does not do well under all that attention. Lance erupts into Shakira’s lyrics, the Spanish lyrics, drinking up the spotlight and letting the soundtrack drip over the planes and angles of his twisting body. He plays to the audience, which whistles and grunts in encouragement of his performance, but his eyes keep coming back to Keith. Playful smiles, sparkling eyes, and with his abdomen exploding into quivering, undoubtedly poisonous butterflies Keith amends that he does not do well under all that _Lance_ attention, but in some sort of nervous malfunction he can’t seem to look away. Thankfully, a hellishly warm eternity later, the song peters out.

“So? How was I?” Lance is grinning from ear to ear, some honest question leaking into his prideful gaze, and in an attempt to escape it Keith looks down. Down to his neck, which has just the lightest glisten of sweat that leads him to where his collar bones must be steaming beneath his suit, so warm and so close, without fully extending his arm he could probably…

He wrenches his eyes back up and smiles stiffly. “You sound terrible.” Which is true, something he noticed nearly halfway through the song. “But, um, your dancing was uh, was really good. I guess.”

It’s enough, because Lance’s grin fades to a softer smile for just long enough that Keith greedily etches it into his memory before it is taken over by that awful, or maybe wonderful laughter. “You don’t need skill for karaoke, Mr. Best-At-Everything, you just need,” he drapes himself dramatically over Keith’s lap and Keith ignores the appealing weight of him, tells himself he stopped breathing because Lance probably stinks and not because he forgot. “You just need _passion_.” He gives that a weighty pause and they stare at each other. The air is heavy, and Keith swallows it, watches as Lance watches his Adam’s apple bob innocently above him. He meets Keith’s eyes with a weak smile then. “All right, you’re up next.”

Keith shoves him off with a sharp laugh. “Hilarious. I’m not going up there.”

“Oh no?”

“Yeah, _no_.”

“Okay Keith, I mean I didn’t think you’d forfeit a measly sing off, but all right…”

The word “forfeit” stops him like he knows it shouldn’t, and after a predictably-lost inner battle he finds himself on stage, knee deep in mortification and regret, waiting for the song to begin. He cautiously drags his eyes from the floor and catches Lance outright _gazing_ at him with his head nestled on his palms like it’s the most natural, not totally and horrifyingly distracting, thing in the world. He closes his eyes, hands clammier than ever and wildly hoping they’ll get attacked, before “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls starts up. It may not be flashy, but he’d never move like Lance anyway, and the song is nice. It’s been an awfully long time since he heard some real music, being a part of Voltron and drifting through ever-expanding space. So he takes a deep breath, and sings.

 

Lance imagines the shitty interior lighting will make things hard to see like it was for him, so he indulges in the rare opportunity to admire Keith—better yet an attractively high-lighted and yet too uncomfortable to be cocky—Keith up on stage. He shakes his head and laughs when the song begins, an almost painfully obvious choice for him, but it dies when he looks back up front. Keith doesn’t move like Lance does. In fact, he doesn’t move it at all. But somehow, the way he stands nearly motionless, eyes shut to the world like he’s forcing that expression into his voice; makes the performance more powerful. And oh, god his _voice_ …Keith never struck Lance as a sing-in-the-shower kind of guy, and in a visceral way he is suddenly so sad for it. It starts out tentative but well-supported, with a deep undertone that lends itself well to the song. The confidence and feeling only grows as it continues and Lance is caught between a smile and a grimace. He aches so badly for Keith to open his eyes and look at him, not for the first time, but especially now; and for a bizarre moment he thinks he can believe the song is just for him, since he’s the only one getting to see it. He only knows it’s over when Keith finally opens his eyes, right onto Lance, and with a mask devoid of feeling he eases off the stage and back to the couch.

“That bad, huh?” His voice is controlled. He looks at Lance’s confusion and elaborates, “I saw your expression when I finished. I mean I don’t usually do stuff like this so.” He absently rubs the hilt of his Bayard and gives an empty chuckle. “Anyway, you’re up I guess.”

Realization hits Lance more powerfully than a freight-train, like his mother smacking him upside the head just when he thinks he’s gotten one over on her. He grabs Keith’s hands and shouts, “No no no! Oh my god you were amazing!” Keith gapes at him silently and he immediately removes his hands and adopts a more casual tone. “I mean, my overall performance was clearly superior, aha, but um. You were great. As much as it pains me to admit it, you have the voice of an angel.” The look Keith gives him at that moment solidifies for Lance the undeniable truth of his demise. He will not perish in a torrent of Galra fire, nor will he choke on one of Hunk’s meal experiments on his way to the toilet. Nope, he will look at a small, genuine smile on Keith’s face just like this and realize that the vice grip of death is as warm and cozy as black lashes and a dimple. Perhaps this very moment, is death!? If so, he would like to run his fingers through that cozy-ass looking mullet just _once_.

“LANCE. Lance. Are you dying? Will you sing another one or what?” Keith’s usual look of distant bewilderment and heavy irritation is back on his face, and Lance brings his hand down from its dangerous proximity to that stupidly beautiful mane.

“Oh no, I think if you sing another one I really will die.” He smacks himself, thankful for the low light that covers the burn in his cheeks. “Because anyone with ears can tell that you’re objectively better. At the singing. In a sing off. Um anyway,” he picks at a rip in the upholstery with just a bit of apprehension, “do you want to maybe…sing one together? Use our Voltron teamwork in another avenue or something?” He tries not to look too hopeful and braces himself for when Keith will refuse.

“Um. Okay,” he says instead, still facing him on the couch, their thighs touching on the rubbery surface and shoulders hovering mere inches apart. “What did you have in mind?” For a moment, Lance considers a cheesy duet but decides not to press his luck. “Even a desert recluse like you should know this one.” He blinks back at Keith’s face, remembers the irrational thoughts about dying. “Come on,” with a loose hold he grabs Keith’s hand and leads him to the stage. He isn’t sure why, but Keith doesn’t pull away and he’s grateful. He only lets go, with an unreasonable amount of distaste, to grab another bulbous mic.

Keith still looks apprehensive on stage, but he gives Lance another small smile, and when “Don’t Stop Believing” starts whimpering out of the speakers, it grows. “Can’t have karaoke without this one.”

Lance beams back at him, no instigation to fight in either of their faces. “Glad you know reason.” Keith’s singing is leagues ahead, but for his part Lance belts out with feeling and even attempts a few barely passable harmonies. They offer the audience fewer glances as they go, Keith first laughing at Lance’s wild moves and then attempting to keep up as he is brought into some haphazard spins and spontaneous choreography. Keith doesn’t like to dance, but at least for now he thinks he might not mind it. When he’s brought flush against Lance’s broad chest and flung swiftly away, never worried for a moment that he will come free from the secure handhold connecting them, he decides that he might actually enjoy it, if he’s dancing with goofy, dramatic, irritating, Lance. The final chorus devolves into snickers when Lance dips him, and then full on laughter when he flicks Lance in the forehead and claims himself winner of the battle, since it was a sing off, and as he’d said Keith had the better singing.

They are oblivious to their new audience member, until Pidge whistles to cut through the other applause to catch their attention. “Very nice, team,” he calls innocently through a deep smirk.

Lance leaps away from Keith like he would a fire. “Uh, Pidge my dude, thanks! Yeah we started out with a competition but Keith couldn’t even carry his own performing weight…”

“I can see that!” Pidge stands from the couch and walks towards the stage, smile bone-chilling in its sweetness. “You sure were carrying a lot of something, Lance. Maybe you would’ve carried him right off stage at the end if we didn’t come to get you.” Lance’s lips contort into a twist of silence in a face dark with blushing.

“Thanks for coming to get us, Pidge,” Keith ventures cautiously, going for normalcy. After all, he only got sloppy at the end. There’s no way he’d been found out or anything. “So uh, how long have you been waiting?”

Pidge turns on Keith with an equally innocent face and he breathes a sigh of relief. “Hm, about where you stare into each other’s eyes lovingly and Lance pulls you on stage with him like a blushing maiden, right before you serenade each other about following dreams? Yeah, I think that’s where I came in.”

Keith burns, suddenly, and this time it has nothing to do with irritatingly-cute Cuban boys. “Pidge! We weren’t, there was nothing _loving_ about our—“

“Enough with your lies red, or I’m telling Shiro that you both FINALLY discovered your mutual feelings through a stirring rendition of Journey’s finest.” She bent to grab the two large shopping bags at her feet, but they were snatched from her before she could touch them.

“Pidgelicious! Why don’t you let the unstoppable Lance grab this for you?”

“Yeah Pidge we need our genius in top shape! I’ll take this other one off your hands.”

Pidge slapped both of their backs roughly with a wicked smile. “There we are boys, you’re learning how this works. Back to the castle.”

Of course, she never promised _not_ to say anything, though the rest of the team’s lack of surprise at the karaoke affair was perhaps more mortifying than when she exposed them upon arrival.

 

 


End file.
